I
I am always in two places
one foot falling to the street, the other still
sinking in mud at the riverbank
kicking up dust on the roadside
walking through never-cut grass, nettles and spit-fly nests.
Gripping root and bark
to finally see the sky,
half-green and shaking light through leaves.
My best years were on the river.
II
Doubled moon shining in the culvert
dirty toes kicking up the dipper.
An imperfect mirror reflecting bulrushes,
stars and young darkened eyes.
Out on the river after moonrise
to collect nightcrawlers and caddisflies,
the shadowed fruit of late hours
and overturned stones.
My fingers are still full of wet earth’s reek,
fireflies tumbling through hair and eyes
running back to the house hidden
in chest-high corn, cedar rows, and crumbling mortar.
Inside, grandma sits down
hands folded in a wilted knot, says
“ho hum” and
“oh boy oh joy”
smokes another cigarette and watches
the tangle of clenched fists and dried mud and fireflies
fall through the open door.
III
How to explain that once
truth was a heap of cloud
pouring into the bay,
wind dredging cold air from the heart of the lake,
shield rock rolling into black water.
We walked to the shore
to smell, hear, see
certainty. The land God gave Cain
opened itself to rain and hail,
the tiniest fists pounding
flat stone into life,
into Precambrian ribbons of black and pink.
Now, in a room
with the false comforts
of walls, dryness, no horizon
you open the window to let in
the sound of rain, the truth of weather.
IV
Every new year’s day
my uncle would fire his father’s
old Remington at the sky over the river,
useless buckshot making grey rings
where there were no clouds.
Then he would roll a cigarette,
eyes smiling but still watching the eddies
and cold tumult of the creek,
looking down at the once-still river bend and twist.
At his feet the sad expanse of another year
emptying into the frozen lake.
Winter made the current half-frozen,
bound quicker, angrier over ice blockades.
One eye and hand on my shoulder,
my uncle would watch the river become
big water:
Lake Erie in January,
shallow and ferocious. Thrashing against the storm doors,
stirring steel and earth,
flashing hard light on eyes
through the screened-in porch.
V
Months later, the lake called
him back to itself.
Looking for the last sandbar
for the buoy, for the rock garden shallows.
One foot crushing the gas pedal and
the other wading through breakers,
clenching sand, treading water. Then
finally, standing on the pier
looking at the lake and sky
opened like a half-drawn face about to rain,
open water and undertow
the only things he was ever sure of.
They say the Great Lakes have their own tide.
An ebb that lasts for decades
drawing lines around the state of Michigan
where water used to be.
The lakes stay inside of us.
Waves still beat a dull rhythm
long after the cold exit from water,
pushing against the small of your back
while you try to sleep.
Storm-watching at dusk:
one foot holding on to the slippery dock, the other kicking the air
still hoping for the moon, dripping wet and golden,
to rise up out of the lake.